


Bonny Portmore

by SpyVsTailor



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Character Death Mentions, F/M, but i ship them so isn't it though?, excuse my pretentious writing, i got a little deep on this one, not quite a pairing fic, traditional irish songs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 04:34:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20901716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpyVsTailor/pseuds/SpyVsTailor
Summary: Just a small moment, but a universe.





	Bonny Portmore

**Author's Note:**

> I had so much fun with my five minute fic last time, I thought I'd do another (really should be working on my novel, but c'est la vie!) Look, I love folk songs, okay?

The entire Abbey was quiet and still.

In the late evening, with the sun set low in the west, burning fire just beyond the horizon, Tom sat with his daughter and nephew in the nursery, a toddler on each knee, tucked against his arm on either side. Nanny had said they were fussy at this time of night, but he had never found them to be anything but sweet babes worried about the coming darkness.

If he sat with them as he did (you'll spoil them, Nanny had warned him archly), and simply sung them to sleep, they were like kittens in a pocket.

"O bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see  
Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree  
For it stood on your shore for many's the long day  
Till the long boats from Antrim came to float it away."

His rebellion may have ended a long time ago, left behind, forgotten in Ireland, but just as Sybil was alive in some small way, deep down inside him, so too were all the years of pain and suffering his countrymen suffered at the hands of the English.

Perhaps it was a bit of the rebel rising up in him, that made him sing such a song to the children. And certainly if Lord Grantham heard him singing such a song to them, Tom would be back in the stables cleaning the automobile and not running the estate, but Lord Grantham retired to bed long ago and no one alive was around to hear him.

"O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand  
And the more I think on you the more I think long  
If I had you now as I had once before  
All the lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore."

Had he really been so beaten down or had he merely grown up? Some days he knew he was a traitor to his class, to his country, but some days he was reminded of why he put up with it all. Sybil loved this land and her family, and Tom loved his wife and his daughter. He did it for Sybbie now. She needed ground to put down roots, and the Branson clan didn't have that, not like Downton.

And he wasn't allowed back home.

Tom Branson was a man who made the best of things. He could patiently wait it all out for Sybbie.

And he thanked God that he was welcome to Downton. There were a million places on earth he could run to with his daughter, but none of them would ever mean more to her than her family.

"All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep  
Saying, 'Where shall we shelter or where shall we sleep?'  
For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down  
And the walls of bonny Portmore are all down to the ground."

And Mary, God help the woman, to lose Matthew on the day of Georgie's birth.

Tom would never wish the loss of a spouse on any man nor woman, but when every year her son grew older, she had to remember what happened only hours after his birth?

Part of him wished he could have offered up his life for Matthew's. Matthew was by far a better man than he was. Patient and able to see the bigger picture to things. He was accepting of Tom long before any of the others, he was a friend.

As a Catholic he would go to hell for even thinking it. But what sort of God took only the good and the pure? How could he look at Sybil and Matthew and think they were the one's to call home?

"O bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand  
And the more I think on you the more I think long  
If I had you now as I had once before  
All the lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore."

In his arms Georgie was the last to stop fussing, the boy having moved now to tuck into his uncle's arm, close to his chest, putting out more heat than a little furnace.

What would become of these two? He wondered. Who would love them more than a parent?

It was hell to think of both of them, floundering for someone to cling to and finding only a broken man and a scarred woman?

"Let me help," Mary's voice broke in, startling him as he stood up to tuck the children away for the night.

Tom flushed only a little, wondering how long she had been there at the doorway to the nursery. It wasn't like he had the finest voice and the song really was more for the babes than for a crowd.

Taking Sybbie in her arms, the child's aunt held her for a while, before almost sadly settling the girl into her cradle.

Doing likewise with Georgie, Tom stood over the boy for a moment, his back to Mary who stood just to his right and behind him a bit, standing over Sybbie's little nest.

Something brushed the palm of his right and Mary was slipping her hand into his briefly, long enough for him to squeeze it kindly, before she pulled it away.

"Thank you, Tom," she murmured, heading for the door, not at all looking back at them. She was still behind the black veil of Matthew's death, but he knew she'd come back one day and she'd come back just as strong as ever.

He wasn't entirely certain what she was thanking him for, so he followed her to the door, turning his entire body to watch her walk away.

Pausing just at the doorway, Mary turned back to him and said, "thank God they have you."

"They have you too," he insisted. "When you're ready to come back to us."

"That song," she said, her eyes glazed with too many sleepless nights and too many tears shed. "Do you always sing it to them?"

"Not always that song."

Mary's eyes shifted down and towards a nearby dollhouse. "How did you do it, Tom? How did you pull yourself out of the hole after Sybil...?"

"I don't know that I did," he admitted gently. "Some days I feel as though I just pulled others down into the hole with me selfishly."

Mary blinked rapidly, fighting back tears. "Will you pull me down with you so we're not alone?"

"And then what?" He teased carefully, mindful of how hurt she was. "We can't live in a hole forever."

"Goodnight, Tom," she simply said, turning again to leave.

"Mary," he stopped her. "I will be here for you, in a hole or out of it, whenever you need."

She floated off like a ghost, leaving him alone with the children once more.

_If I had you now as I had once before..._


End file.
